The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. — D.H. Lawrence

Fun, fun, fun! Matt Yglesias demonstrates the fine liberal art of feigning repentance as he throws the no-longer-useful Bill Clinton right under the feminist issues bus. Former heroes of the Left are all very well, but getting Roy Moore could mean one more vote in the Senate.

I, like most Americans, was glad to see Clinton prevail and regarded the whole sordid matter as primarily the fault of congressional Republicans’ excessive scandal-mongering. Now, looking back after the election of Donald Trump, the revelations of massive sexual harassment scandals at Fox News, the stories about Harvey Weinstein and others in the entertainment industry, and the stories about Roy Moore’s pursuit of sexual relationships with teenagers, I think we got it wrong. We argued about perjury and adultery and the meaning of the word “is.” Republicans prosecuted a bad case against a president they’d been investigating for years.

What we should have talked about was men abusing their social and economic power over younger and less powerful women. ….

Unfortunately for me, I’m a little too old to get away with claiming to have had no opinion on this at the time. My version of a sophisticated high schooler’s take on the matter was that the American media should get over its bourgeois morality hang-ups and be more like the French, where François Mitterrand’s wife and his longtime mistress grieved together at his funeral.

As a married 30-something father, I’ve come around to a less “worldly” view of infidelity. As a co-founder of Vox, I’d never in a million years want us to be the kind of place where men in senior roles can get away with the kind of misconduct that we’ve seen is all too common in our industry and in so many others.

Most of all, as a citizen I’ve come to see that the scandal was never about infidelity or perjury — or at least, it shouldn’t have been. It was about power in the workplace and its use. The policy case that Democrats needed Clinton in office was weak, and the message that driving him from office would have sent would have been profound and welcome. That this view was not commonplace at the time shows that we did not, as a society, give the most important part of the story the weight it deserved.

As the current accountability moment grows, we ought to recognize and admit that we had a chance to do this almost 20 years ago — potentially sparing countless young women a wide range of unpleasant and discriminatory experiences, or at a minimum reducing their frequency and severity. And we blew it.

And, if no Republican were in the cross-hairs, let us ask ourselves: what would Matt Yglesias be saying? We know perfectly well he’d be taking the same position he did twenty years ago.

Let me get this straight… Ivygate reports that two Yale students complained of being “sexually assaulted” while attending a BDSM Party. What did they think those riding crops were for?

Last week, Yale students received two university-wide Clery Act emails informing them that two Yale students were victims of “sexual assault by an acquaintance, who is also a Yale student” at the Sigma Phi Epsilon house on February 8th. February 8th was the night of the annual “Dom” party thrown by the Women in Power Society (WIPS), a secret society, which was held in the SigEp house.

The “Dom” party is an infamous, no-cellphones-allowed event. From what we hear, people dress up in BDSM gear and porn is projected on the walls as hot freshmen guys pass around drinks. Interestingly, it’s also generalized as one of the safer party SigEp hosts: there is a closed guest list with doors closing at 11 pm and everyone (besides those hot freshmen boys) is over 21-years-old.

For two assaults to happen on a night that typically gets by without major public notice is surprising–but only considering its history of safety. Dom is a party full of porn, S&M, and lots of alcohol, after all.

Yale Police Department Chief Ronnell Higgins reported the two statements in separate emails to the University community on Feb. 19 and Feb. 21. The messages stated that the alleged assaults occurred at the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house, and the second email corrected the first by reporting that they were both said to have taken place on Feb. 8.

“I write to let [the University community] know that the Yale Police received an anonymous report today that a second Yale student was the victim of a sexual assault by an acquaintance, who is also a Yale student,” Higgins said in the Feb. 21 email.

On Feb. 22, President of the Yale Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter Andrew Goble ’15 issued a statement saying the fraternity allowed another student group to lease a room in its house for a private event on Feb. 8. The statement said the event was open to guests of that organization, which remained unnamed.

“The members of Yale’s SigEp chapter were shocked and saddened to hear allegations that sexual assault may have occurred in our facility on an evening when the chapter had leased event space to another campus organization,” Goble said in the statement. “At this time, SigEp does not believe that the allegations are against members of their chapter.” …

On the same night of Feb. 8, a private party in connection with the Women in Power Society (WIPS) senior society, took place at the SigEp fraternity house. Nine students interviewed said that party had a “dominatrix” theme. Several attendees declined to provide additional details about the annual party.

The WIPS said in a statement to the News, “We are not commenting out of respect for the privacy of the individuals involved in this situation.”

A student who attended the party and spoke on the condition of anonymity said the WIPS’ mission is to promote female empowerment.

The National Enquirer cannot write grammatically, but it has been correct before about the scandalous love lives of prominent democrats (like John Edwards), so its contention that Barack Obama at some unspecified date spent the night at Washington, D.C.’s Hotel George with his 2004 Senate campaign Finance Director may possibly be true.

I don’t understand why the president would be staying at a Washington hotel overnight. He does actually have a residence elsewhere in that city. But the Hotel George is trendy and advertises itself as an eco-friendly, “green” boutique hotel with “a progressive approach to the well-being of our guests and planet” and is certainly just the kind of place Barack Obama would patronize.

Proof of a hot black mistress must be a little disappointing, I expect, to anyone who bought in to the gay sex and drugs rumors that swirled around Barack Obama during the 2008 Presidential Campaign. (Those rumors came from a petty criminal named Larry Sinclair who was anything but a credible source.)